


The Whole World Shimmers

by Lynds



Category: Cyrano de Bergerac - Edmond Rostand
Genre: All the major characters live, Amputation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Lynds attempts many voices, M/M, Major Character Injury, Martin Crimp translation, Multi, Polyamory, Roxane spends her life facepalming, Self-Esteem Issues, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, but it's a war so... sorry Le Bret :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:01:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23118145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynds/pseuds/Lynds
Summary: After Christian kisses him, Cyrano has a split second decision; catch Roxane and ask her, is it true? Could she really love someone like him? Or run after Christian and keep him safe from the enemy's bullets.
Relationships: Cyrano de Bergerac/Christian de Neuvillette, Cyrano de Bergerac/Christian de Neuvillette/Roxane, Cyrano de Bergerac/Roxane
Comments: 53
Kudos: 48





	1. Cyrano

**Author's Note:**

> [Begins with this gif...](https://johnnysilverhand.tumblr.com/post/611853752701435904)
> 
> I don't know what to say... this sort of attacked me after I watched the play and had my heart absolutely broken. And since there's not much I can do to revisit this version of the play (God I hope they make a DVD!) I had to get it all out quickly, before their voices disappeared from my head! There are 6 chapters, two from each character's POV, and I've tried really hard to make them all sound different, both their accents and also their word choices, so hopefully that comes across! Enjoy!
> 
> Thank you so much for cheerleading me as always, FlightInFlame!!

He’s kissing me, and for a moment, every thought in my mind, every rushing waterfall of nervous electricity is silenced and still. 

He’s kissing me, one hand coming up to my cheek, and I realise my eyes are still open, still staring out beyond him into confusion and denial because he, with all his beauty and sweetness, he can’t be kissing me.

He’s kissing me, and I can’t keep up this denial. Without me, my mind relinquishes control, my eyes shut, my whole body reduces down to this one place, the point where our lips connect, soft and warm and I’m kissing him, breathing him in. 

This is impossible, and I’m falling into it, the wind rushing past my ears as my heart rises in my throat, and I never thought it could be like this. Never thought, after all my dreaming and wishing that love could be for me, and not just from me, that it would feel like this to have someone open themselves to me, part their lips in want and move closer, closer, I want him closer and he’s gone. 

He’s gone and he’s crying out in rage, calling for Roxane, telling her - no! - telling her I’ve got something to say to her and running away, away from both of us.

This is not how it’s meant to go.

There’s a split second when Roxanne’s shoved towards me and half of me stops there and holds her arms, holds her back, demands to know if it’s true, but the other half of me, the other half of my heart cracked down the middle looks out into no-mans land and sees him running.

I run after him. Le Bret has his arms around Roxane’s waist, lifting her off her screaming, furious feet but I’m diving into the night to catch her husband, keep him safe, as I said I would. 

It’s inevitable that the mortar fire starts now, and I’m furious, the world ready to take from me again when I dare to think I have something more than what I deserve. I have my fist gripping his shirt when the first blast throws us off our feet, and it’s enough to shock him out of his rage and grief and bring him back to a soldier’s mind, cocking his rifle as our ears hum with adrenaline and the hot blood of battle.

We’re back to back, Christian and I. The odds are overwhelming and I smile into the night and roar because when are they not? Bring it on, world. Bring me your hate and your constant weight of suppression and silence. See if you can beat me now.


	2. Christian

When the second blast hits us, it’s like nothing I ever imagined, just pain… never ending pain through my whole body. I lie on my back and stare up into the sky, little stars appearing through the smoke as it clears. There are noises around me, pain and fear - but it’s worse when them noises stop. I lie and feel the pain and wonder when I’m going to die. 

I think about Roxane, but not just her. I think about Cyrano too. I hope they got away.

He loves her. It hurts in my throat when I remember that, tears prickling in my eyes. I… think I still love her too? I don’t know. When I close my eyes I see her burning bright like a star - and then I think, are those my words? Are those Cyrano’s? His words… his words have always caught my attention, God, how he can speak, how he can write. 

It’s no wonder she fell in love with the words, those words she thinks tell the soul of me. They don’t, they tell his soul, not mine. I ain’t that deep, just simple country Christian. Not that deep, nor that long, it seems, cause I’m pretty sure I’m gonna die here.

I close my eyes and someone grabs my arm. I scream because my God it hurts so fuckin’ much, my arm! My fucking arm! But then I scream because there’s a monster soaked in blood leaning over me and I swear he’s gonna eat me.

“Christian,” the monster growls, and holy shit it’s Cyrano. Because of fucking course it is.

“Cyrano?”

“You alright?” he grunts and he pulls me up.

I hold up my right hand. What’s left of it. He hisses to see it and it pulls something on his face, makes it bleed more. “You’re hurt,” I say.

He just glances at me, doesn’t say nuffin’. Just turns to the other men. The other bodies.

Cyrano De fucking Bergerac. How many of the enemy did he kill? Did he end this war all by himself? Wouldn’t surprise me, or anyone else in Paris, I guess.

I don’t realise I’ve slumped back down on the ground ‘til Cyrano grabs me. “Oh no ye don’t. Get up,” he says.

“Forget it, Cyrano,” I grumble and push him away, but fuck it hurts.

“Forget it? Fuck off. Get on your feet, man. We’re going home.”

I laugh and cry. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can, get up, soldier.”

“Fuck, I can’t, Cyrano,” I say. I whimper. “It hurts.”

He kneels down by my side and puts his hand on my chest, right over my heart. “Aye, I know,” he says, his voice softer now, but still a growl. “I know. But you’ll not die here, Christian, and do you know why? Because I fuckin’ say so.”

I laugh, sort of.

“Look at the stars,” he says, and he turns his face to the sky. His poor, damaged face, burned and broken, one eye swollen shut. His nose broken, of course - how could it not be? I want to make it better but I can’t barely lift my own hand, not even the good one. “Look at the stars,” he says again. “They’re still there, behind the grime and the dirt of war and blood. They’re Paris, the stars - they’re our home, and I won’t leave you here when Paris beckons us home with soft lights and sweet wine.”

He lifts me, won’t take no for an answer. He stands me on my two feet and slings my good arm over his shoulder where it quickly soaks in his blood. The breeze on the mess at the end of my arm is like fire and I curl my body over it. He sees - he sees everything, Cyrano. He puts one arm around my waist and I feel the power in it, those thick muscles bunched up behind my back. I’ll admit, now, dehydrated and losing blood, that I’ve looked at those muscles many times, watched them bunch and stretch as he moves. 

Time does a weird elastic thing as we walk. It’s an effort to make my eyes focus, but I don’t need to read nothing now so I don’t bother, just look forward at the mud and holes in the ground while Cyrano walks beside me, strong as ever. Only… he’s not. He’s pretending, and I wonder how long he’s been doing that. Cause I think this is normal for him, only no-one’s noticed before. How has no-one noticed? Cause that’s just him I guess. Takes on a hundred men? Just Cyrano. Gives his life savings to a theatre to make a point? Eh, that’s just Cyrano, innit?

Leads us to hell and back again? Cyrano. Cyrano De Bergerac.

At first he talks and talks, like always. Funny and clever and full of the kind of passion I only ever been able to express with my hands. He tells me about the Odyssey, another bunch of soldiers makin’ an impossible journey home and he makes it sound like some sort of adventure. Like fun. I want to tell him this shit ain’t been fun since never and then I look at him and his eyes is beggin’ me, beggin’ me to smile and appreciate his effort.

So I do. I laugh and I let him take away my pain with his words and I pretend I can see the pictures he makes with them, like he can. I pretend it’s a comfort and it is, I s’pose, because it’s him.

Until he can’t any more. Until we been walking three days an’ the skin around my wounds has gone blackish and not from the clots of blood. Until his face weeps yellow and I think it smells rank, but then we both smell pretty rank.

By time we get to the main camp I suspect I might be holding him up as much as he’s holding me. But there are men running towards us and they’re shouting and look horrified and it’s all kind of blurry, so I close my eyes and rest. Just a little.


	3. Roxane

“Don’t _tell_ me to ‘calm down girl’!” I shout at Leila, dodge her outspread arms, trying to stop me from rushing out the open door and into the street without my shirt buttoned up right. Who gives a fuck about my shirt? My husband is in the hospital, and Cyrano, and they’re both in a critical condition. I’ll be as fucking flustered as I like, thank you very much. I’ll be positively shrill, in fact.

“Fine,” says Leila, “but the taxi’s not here yet, so there’s no point in rushing, is there? Better to get there safe than quickly.”

And if quickly’s all I have? If I get there too late, words like septicaemia and shock and gangrene filling my head. I don’t say it. To say it would be to speak it into truth.

I spend the entire drive ignoring Leila. She keeps talking anyway, it’s more of a comfort for herself than me. The moment the taxi stops outside the hospital, I’m out, throwing myself across the road amidst the profanities of insulted pedestrians and drivers. I couldn’t care less. I just need to see them.

Him. I need to see him - my husband. Cyrano as well, of course, I’ll see him after, but Christian is my _husband,_ of course I need to see him.

In the end it turns out they’re lying side by side, both pale and thin, eyes shut and bandaged tight, more than I’d ever want to see them, and oh, it’s all become real in a way it never was. The war. The fact that they’re soldiers. De Guiche’s vindictiveness and their starvation, the dropping of bombs and the mortar fire that to Leila and I had been exhilarating but somehow not real.

Now I fall into the hard plastic chair between their beds and I think of the men who didn’t come back, Le Bret and all the others, their words silenced forever under the hail of politics and toxic masculinity that masquerades as might and right.

Cyrano’s face is half covered in bandages, and I want to soothe him, take away what must be incredible pain. My skin aches and tingles in sympathy and I’m glad he sleeps, but to see him silent is more terrifying than to see him hurt. He is… smaller like this. Younger. The boy I played with out in the fields, the boy so close I called him cousin. I hurt for him, and wish it was any comfort.

But Christian, oh, my darling Christian! His hand, his poor, clever, passionate hand is gone, cut off at the wrist and wrapped in a white stump of bandage. I try to force a smile as I hold his un-damaged left, but then Leila squeezes my shoulder and I remember there’ll be time for that mask later, when he’s awake and looking to me for strength and reassurance. So I weep.

He’ll never write again. Not unless he learns to use his left hand. My breath shudders under the weight of the world’s unfairness, but something in me hardens, a core I knew was there but never had tested. I’ll be his hand for him. I’ll hear his words, those beautiful words dropped like pearls at my feet, and I’ll write them for him, anything he likes.

By the time he wakes, I’ve cleaned my face, wiped away all traces of grief. I’m ready to be happiness incarnate for my returning husband, the conquering heroes. There’s already talk of a medal for both of them, and fuck what De Guiche says (though he’s keeping quiet these days). It’s Christian that wakes first, and I lie next to him on the narrow bed and kiss his fine, soft eyelids gently, holding him in my arms and pressing my smile into his skin.

Cyrano takes longer to wake, and that surprises me, and then it doesn’t. Because Christian tells me he’s been giving his rations to the others for ages, and I could slap him because he’s now so drained of resources that he can’t fight off this infection digging into his skin, creeping black lines across his face. 

He cries out with a fever, and I come in some days to find Christian lying next to him, speaking soft words I can’t hear and cooling his face with wet cloths. Cyrano leans into him, though he doesn’t seem conscious of anything, and there’s this tipping point in my heart that sings to see them like that.

It’s his kindness. It’s Christian’s kindness made so clear, that’s what makes my heart feel three times larger. So gentle, the way he rocks his wounded friend even while his own damaged arm fumbles awkwardly, how he sings quietly to our beloved Cyrano.

Beloved because he’s my oldest friend, of course. And because Christian has told me about how Cyrano practically carried him to safety - I’ll be forever grateful to him. So grateful.

And then one day Christian tells me the truth, and I hate them both.

Cyrano’s lucid, has been for little while, sitting up for short periods of time and smiling when I come in, just with one side of his face. I’m so happy for those few days, so relieved. The world feels bright with possibility, because my husband and my oldest friend are getting better, and I’ve never felt luckier.

I’ve never felt more angry.

Cyrano tries to shut Christian down, tell me no, it was always Christian’s words, but once he says it, I feel so fucking stupid. How have I never seen it? I’ve heard Cyrano speak my entire life, why didn’t his voice come through in the letters? Those _letters,_ the ones that burrowed into my very soul and sang to me, uplifted me, aroused me. _Changed_ me. I am a different person now than I was when I first met Christian and I thought it was him. I trusted him, I trusted them both.

I hurl the last letter out of the window and Cyrano’s crying, and I’m so angry! Why? Why would they do that to me?

“Because I love you was never enough,” Christian says sharply. He’s standing, his hand on Cyrano’s shoulder. Cyrano, who looks more wounded by this than by any bomb, and I want to stop hurting him, but I want to stop hurting myself, first.

“Did I really love two men?” I ask, staring between them, my eyes burning with the effort of holding back my emotions (always holding them back, always be stronger than a man lest you prove their suspicions right). “Or no man at all?”

Christian looks away, jaw clenching with the strike at his honour. Cyrano, though… Cyrano looks like he never expected anything different than for the world to say he was never loved, and that makes me angry too. I don’t know quite why.

I cry in Leila’s arms, in the back room of the cafe, where nobody will see but her. I’m so lost, in a way I never have been, the world rocking beneath my feet. I’ve always been so sure of what I am, but now… now I don’t even know what I want. Who I want. The voice in the letters, the voice I now know was Cyrano’s, it filled me with love and hope and, oh, so much passion I sometimes wept just to read the first line. 

But Christian’s arms around me, his eyes on me, professing I love you, I love you, I adore you. It had seemed nothing at the time, and then seemed even less when I saw what I believed he could express. I said I was ashamed to have fallen for his looks, but it’s not just how he looks, but the way that he looks _at me._ The simple, unadulterated sweetness, the humour, the enthusiasm. How he couldn’t cope with the dishonesty in the end.

I don’t know what I want. I don’t know who I love, if I love either of them, or if I’m Icarus, flying too close to the sun, asking more of the world than any woman can ever get. 

I don’t know what I want.


	4. Christian

I thought it would be better once I’d told her. I thought it would make sense, like I’d know what I wanted. Like it’d be better for her to know the truth because at least one of us could be happy, right? Cyrano loves her. She loves the letters.

I love them. I want them to be happy, and fuck, it hurts, but my heart is a simple thing. Ain’t no point in fucking around with should or can’t, it just does. It loves them both.

Is there a world where two men can live as one? I look over at Cyrano in the moonlight, wish for him in my arms, and notice that he’s shaking. He’s turned away from me, his shoulders hunched up round his neck and his back’s shuddering. “Cyrano?”

“What is it?” he asks, his body stilling, his voice… just wrong.

I climb out of bed and sit next to him, my hand on his side. He’s so warm. “You OK?” I ask. Fuck it. I wish I knew how to say something clever.

“Aye.”

I think about it for a moment. “Bullshit.”

He laughs and sniffs, and I lie down next to him, shoving my good hand under his neck to pull him close, press his back against my chest so’s I can curl around him and protect him. He tries to hold the tremors back, I can tell, but that just makes the sob come out louder when it comes. “Shh, Cyrano,” I whisper, and I wish for my other hand so I can soothe him somehow, stroke his hair where it’s growing out, squeeze his arm where it tries to hide his face. My heart breaks for him. “What’s the matter?”

It takes him a while to answer. “I fucked… everything up that matters. She hates me, and you… I couldn’t even keep you safe.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Are you kidding? You brought me home! Cyrano, you saved my life.”

It doesn’t seem to calm him, and he curls his body tighter. I want to unwrap him, turn him around so I can tell him with my eyes cause my words have never been good enough. “You saved me,” I say again.

“I ruined your life,” he whispers. “I’m sorry, Christian, I’m so sorry. I ruined… everything.”

I kiss him on the temple, a patch of skin where the bandages end, and I try to hold him tighter against me. “You ain’t ruined anything. And Roxane…” I sigh. “She’ll come round. She’ll understand. You know she said she fell in love with the writer? Well… she loves you.” I shrug. It’s obvious to me, though it makes my eyes burn too. 

I’m in love with two brilliant, incredible people. Roxane, whose beauty is rivalled only by her ferocity, I mean, people say I’m pretty but she’s way out of my league. And intellectually? Shit. Ain’t no comparison, is there? And Cyrano, Cyrano with his acres of high brow wet dream (he liked that, so I gotta remember it, huh?), with his stupid self-loathing and thinkin’ no-one could ever look past that nose to the heart behind that’s like ten times bigger than anyone else’s. How could I not adore him? How could anyone? Roxane certainly does. I can tell.

I sigh into the back of his neck, my sadness making me tired. Cyrano’s stopped sobbing and lies in my arms, so I suppose he’s as OK as he can be.

“You’ll see,” I say. “Tomorrow everything’ll be fine.”


	5. Cyrano

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that earns the rating, guys! You've been warned - it's only like a paragraph but just in case

The moonlight spills across his face. It caresses his skin, so flawless and smooth, softens over the dark hollows of his eyes, reversing time and bringing him back to the bolshy young man I first met, needling me and tense in my conflicted, furious, envious arms.

In the moonlight the bandages across my face blend into my skin, the black under my eyes, the swollen stitches and clotted cuts are submerged in shadow. I could almost be… acceptable.

My nose, still, now a crooked hook of a thing, serves to remind me where I stand in this world. Because he’s right, Roxane will forgive. Her anger’s like that, a lightning strike. But it’s him she loves. She only loves my words when she believes they come from his mouth, only tells herself she could kiss someone like me.

I stare at the mirror made out of the window, silver moonlight backing, and my grotesque face a parody of itself, without even symmetry now, my oh so famous nose cracked and twisted even after surgery. It casts a shadow over Christian’s face and I move. I’ve marked his life enough.

It’s no work at all to discharge myself, even so late at night. And then it’s just me and the moonlight and my feet on the pavement, and I’m once again anonymous to myself. I close my eyes, let the moon bathe me, and walk.

It’s days and nights before she finds me. I never expected her to look, or I’d have tried to hide, or perhaps I wouldn’t. Perhaps I’m turned to stone on this bench, my arse rooted to the wood of it, staring out across the park with my thoughts all twisting and burning so far beneath my tongue they might not exist at all. Is it morning or afternoon? Is it this day or that, will my hands even move if I lift them?

When she sits beside me I think she’s a memory. When she takes my hand I startle. Turn my face to her and bask in her beauty, smile slowly like moonrise and think somewhere passive that her answering smile looks worried.

“Roxane,” is all I can say, a breath in cracked words.

“We’ve been looking for you, Cyrano,” she says. 

I look down at her hands clutching mine, her long, ink-stained fingers soft on my palm. “Why? No,” I laugh, “I’m fine, don’t worry about me.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re such an idiot! What were you thinking, leaving like that? We went to your flat, the landlord said you’d stopped paying rent even before you were deployed. Where have you been staying?”

I wave my hand, the one she isn’t clutching, brushing away this unimportant thing. I want to hear more about her and see she’s happy, not weigh down the conversation with unimportant things. “What about Christian? Have you made up?”

“Cyrano…”

“What I did… I shouldn’t have, I know, but I was selfish. I had a small corner of what I’d wanted for years—“

“For _years?”_

“—and I should have made it the partnership I’d promised him, let him read every letter, but I couldn’t resist… and then I didn’t want to wake him, and it was like food and water to me, writing to you, but Roxane, those words… they’re words I’d never be able to say if they didn’t come through his name, his voice. They are… his, though they’re framed by me. He loves you. Isn’t that enough?”

“No,” she bursts, and I stop, my jaw hanging, because I’ve fucked this so fuckin’ much, I’ve ruined everything for them. “No, it’s not, because it’s only half of what I fell for.” She holds my hands, both of them cradled between hers, and captures my gaze with her beautiful, night-dark velvet eyes, the ones that cast all my words and bravado to the ground and leave me squirming.

“I thought for a long time that I’d over-reached,” she says, and her lips curl into that smile I live for. “Wanting the pretty face and the pretty words in one perfectly wrapped package - when I learned Christian wasn’t that whole deal, I admit there was a voice a lot like my mother’s, saying I’d always expected more than the world could give me.”

“But you _deserve—“_

“Shut up and let me speak,” she says, one eyebrow raised, her lip curled up playfully on one side. “But then I thought… the world _did_ give me all I wanted. It just… came in a set.”

I stare at her. She lets go of my hands with one of hers and even as I mourn the loss of it, gives it back to me by caressing my cheek. I close my eyes against my will, and then, oh God, and then, she’s kissing me.

My breath shudders to feel her lips on mine, her soft, so perfect lips that I’ve dreamed of since I wasn’t yet a man. My hand shakes. My whole body shakes, my breath shakes and I’m ruining it all because I’m crying, my body shaking under the weight of sob after sob, pressed into the perfumed warmth of her neck, spilling apologies clumsily onto her skin as she hushes me, rocks me, like she once did when we were children and she caught me too hard with that stick of hers.

It’s too much. It’s impossible. I can barely dare to hold her back, to wrap my arms around her waist and pull her close, I want her under my skin, I want to devour her, I want her.

And then he’s there, his good hand on my waist, sitting behind me and bracketing me with her. I can’t breathe. It’s so much, and I don’t know how to be, how to get all the things I’ve ever wanted.

They bracket me. They take me home _(home)_ and they bathe me, they put gentle hands on me and let me fall apart in their arms, fall to my knees and cling to each of them, holding them tight without words.

What can I say? My tongue has been stolen away by the two of them, my words that had been my only comfort, my only love, I look up at them and there are no words. Roxane smiles as she brushes tears off my face, Christian strokes through my hair and my heart is so full that there is no room for words.

I can’t breathe. I am bracketed, an aside between the two of them, words unsaid and unforming in my mind that’s so full of _them,_ of love finally, finally finding a mark, two marks. I’ve been given a double and I laugh, pressing my face that still aches against Christian’s hip, my arms tight around Roxane’s thighs. She laughs too, and Christian smiles, kisses her sweet lips and strokes his fingers through my hair.

I’m afraid. I can’t breathe. I can’t speak. I can’t stop crying and the terror wraps around my throat and stirs my thoughts into a frenzy, because I can’t speak and to speak is to breathe, for me. I press my face harder, harder into the rough of his trousers, and try to breathe. I’m going to lose my words, and if I lose my words, why would they keep me around? Bracketed by them, I have no words. Without their loving parentheses I love words, that’s all.

They wrap around me in their bed, and it’s Christian who speaks now. I drink it in, fill me, please, fill my heart with something else because I don’t know who I am anymore, I am nothing without you and I’m afraid I’m nothing bracketed by you, my loves, my heart given wings. He tells me that I’m welcome, that they both love me _(love me),_ that they want me here with them, between them, within their couple, Roxane (Cyrano) Christian. I am afraid. I can’t breathe. I sleep.

My words return. My face heals, the bandages unwrapped piece by piece. My tongue works, my throat is unblocked, the words falling again, laid out before them like the only gift I have, desperate for them to accept when I talk of their beauty. The damage to my eye is a welcome payment for the return of my words.

Then Christian takes my hands in his one remaining hand and smiles crookedly at me, kneels before me on the bed. “You’re beautiful too, you know?” He says, as if it shouldn’t be news to me. Like it’s just a reminder of something I already knew, like I’ve ever been able to look into the mirror and say ‘aye, not bad.’

Roxane sits beside him and nods, and I laugh at them both. They’re not laughing.

She touches my face - my nose - and I nearly startle back. She waits for my consent, for my flinch to turn into _yes, please, give me another chance, I didn’t realise._ She strokes down the crooked length of it and I close my eyes.

“You’ve got really pretty eyes,” Christian says, and I open them to stare at him. He looks at me, his head on one side, his thumb brushing my cheekbone. I look for the lie, but this is Christian, and I’m not laughing.

His thumb drifts down slowly to my lips and they fall open, forming a kiss to the tip. Roxane kneels up next to him, on my other side, my brackets closed again. “You know that’s not why we love you, though, right?” She says softly. 

I laugh softly, not taking my eyes off Christian. Roxane wraps her arms around me, stroking her hands down my chest, up my neck. “It’s not why any of us love,” she continues, pressing kisses into the junction of my neck and shoulder, melting this body within my skin. “It’s not your words or Christian’s face or my brains. It’s this.”

She splays her hand over my heart, beating only for them, at their command. Christian nods. They raise the shirt off me, off over my head.

I am between them, bracketed by them. My words are nothing, our bodies warm and slick and tight around each other. I am inside Roxane, my lips pressed to the tendons on her neck as she arches. Christian is inside me, his arm around my waist, his teeth brushing my shoulder. I shift, move back, lift Roxane up, and she kisses Christian over my shoulder as they bracket me, touch me, love me, and let me worship them and every inch of skin, of thought, every cry of pleasure from their bodies. I would spend my entire life giving them the world, which they have already given me by loving me back, an endless circle of offering and receiving, of love and touch and the whole world in the arch of our arms.

Christian turns my face to kiss me, presses deep into me as I press into Roxane, and the three of us are falling forever. I would give them anything. All I have is myself, and I will give them that as long as I can still breathe, and those times when I can’t as well. The last thing I will ever do is give myself to them.


	6. Roxane

We sit in the quiet of a winter evening, the fire in the grate a crackling comfort. Christian sits on an armchair, Cyrano lounged on the floor at his feet, his head resting back against Christian’s knee. I sit on Christian’s other knee and brush the hair out of Cyrano’s face where it’s growing longer. He smiles up at me lazily.

I feel complete, like the thing that was missing, that I’ve been striving and fighting for all my life is finally here. As a married woman, I’m safe from De Guiche and as a woman I’m used to the slime of men’s eyes roving me. I don’t care. Because everyone knows to fuck with me is to fuck with Cyrano. I don’t need a man to keep me safe, I’ve done it for years without him. But it’s a buffer. Even with one eye permanently damaged, he’s always ready to take on a hundred men. 

Although… I notice now that he’s less likely to. It’s like knowing that he has love allows him to stop chasing the hate. I think he was afraid for a while, that without it he wouldn’t be able to write, but that’s not the case. I’ve found him sitting up at all hours, scribbling so fast that the pen breaks, that he’s practically crawling into the pages himself. I smile and kiss his head, ready to move on and back to bed, but he always stops. He always looks up at me with those fierce sharp eyes softened with love, before diving right back into his fury.

I leave him to it until he’s not eaten for a day and a half. Then Christian and I attack like wolves, drawing him away with kisses and caresses, feeding him and making him drink while he’s still dumbstruck, the way he probably always will be when we show him affection. Idiot boy. I love him.

And Christian! How did I ever think his words were stiff and cold? How did I hear ‘I love you’ and not feel like the sun was rising in my chest? He’ll never argue books with me, or discuss the intersectionality of class and gender in Shakespeare’s work, but he’ll sing loud and lovely, he’ll drag the two of us out to see the two-headed daisy that’s grown large and glorious in our garden, he’ll cook us food and look at us with his big brown eyes, laughter creased into the corners of them and say ‘I love you’ like that’s all that’s needed. And it is. I love him.

Christian’s fingers glide up and down my ribs, aimlessly stroking as we talk of our day, of my studies, of Cyrano’s endless search for a job that he can keep for longer than his temper. Christian rests his right arm on Cyrano’s temple, trying to show both of us at the same time how he wants us always to be in contact. He laughs as he does it and looks at the stump of his wrist. “What?” Asks Cyrano, leaning to look up at him.

“Just thinkin’,” he says. “It’s a good thing I lost my arm and you got your face damaged, innit?”

I frown, but Cyrano laughs, nodding. “Aye, if it were the other way round we’d be no good to anyone.”

“Is that really what you think?” I ask, shoving their heads one after the other. They look at me in surprise. “Bloody hell,” I sigh, rolling my eyes. “Why do you love me?”

“Because you’re Roxane,” Christian says promptly. Shrugging like it’s obvious.

“Because my heart was lost in yours so long ago, I can’t help loving you,” says Cyrano.

“So not because I’m pretty?”

“You’re pretty anyway, whether or not I love you,” Christian says. 

“Aye, you are unbearably beautiful, but no, that’s not why.”

“So it’s not because I’m clever, either?”

Christian laughs and shakes his head. Cyrano smiles and turns, placing one hand on Christian’s thigh, the other on my ankle. “No. Your mind is part of it, because it’s you, but it’s… something more.”

“Exactly,” I say, nudging him with my foot. He laughs and catches it, rubbing strong hands up my calf to the back of my knee. I look between the two of them, try to open my heart up the way Christian can with his eyes, to find the words the way Cyrano can. “We started out like that. I _fell_ for your looks, and for your words, but that’s not why I stayed. And… I didn’t know how it would be. I’d never been in love before, and I was arrogant. But the reasons I fell are only a small part of why I love. You are both more beautiful, more incredible, more eloquent than when I first met you, but not because…” I frown and think hard. “Not because you are _objectively_ any of those things. Perhaps you’ve changed, perhaps not. But _to me,_ you are beautiful.” I stroke Cyrano’s scarred face. “To me, you are a wordsmith.” I kiss Christian’s fingertips. 

They sleep curled around me that night, both turned towards me like I’m the sun, and they my flowers. Over my belly, Cyrano’s fingers tangle with Christian’s, and they lie in a mirror of each other as I smile down at them, the three of us sharing a life and a soul. I smile and close my eyes, and think of Cyrano’s stupid jokes, and how the barman always gave him a double.

I will tell them again, I know. Some days they might have to tell me. But the three of us, we’ll be there to face the world together, because we were made for each other.


End file.
